OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO. Confidentially. Because nothing screams transparency like the company building humanity's future intelligence keeping its financials secret until the last possible moment.
The filing comes days before SpaceX goes public and a week after Anthropic disclosed with the SEC. Three AI companies racing to let retail traders hold their bags. It's like watching a relay race where the baton is your retirement account.
Confidential filings exist so companies can prep their roadshow without showing you the part where revenue doesn't cover the electric bill for the GPU farm. OpenAI gets to whisper sweet nothings to institutional investors while you read breathless headlines about ChatGPT changing the world. By the time you see the S-1, Goldman already allocated shares to clients who vacation in Aspen.
Wall Street calls this a mega AI debut. Mega. As if adding an adjective makes the valuation rational. OpenAI burns billions training models that tell people how to make banana bread. The business model is charge eight dollars a month and hope Microsoft doesn't notice the Azure bill.
SpaceX going public the same week is perfect timing. Elon Musk can finally let pension funds pay for his Mars fantasies while Sam Altman lets them pay for his god complex. Anthropic filed too. Constitutional AI. Safe AI. Confidential AI. All the AI companies discovered they need your money at exactly the same moment.
Retail traders will line up to buy at whatever price Morgan Stanley sets. They'll post rockets on Reddit. They'll explain why this time is different. They'll ignore that confidential means you're buying something you're not allowed to see until after you've already lost money on it.
The IPO will price at a hundred billion and trade to two hundred on hype before settling at sixty when someone asks about profit margins.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment